Interview - Avatar: The Way of Water : Let's talk with the composer Simon Franglen

By Mulder, Los Angeles, 12 december 2022

Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: the way of the water tells the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri and their children), the trials they face, the paths they must take to protect each other, the battles they must fight to stay alive and the tragedies they endure. Directed by James Cameron, produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau via Lightstorm Entertainment, the new 20th Century Studios film stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang and Kate Winslet. The script is by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, based on a story by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman and Shane Salerno. David Valdes and Richard Baneham are executive producers.

Q : What Can you tell us about your musical background ?

Simon Franglen : Well, I started very early. I could not do anything else. I had 30 and I wrote to the BBC and I said how do I become a record producer and then I went to University and did the normal things but I went straight into recording studios. I love the studio. I love being in the studio and that is the instrument that I play is studio and I started working on records initially for a record producer called Trevor Horn who was a famous producer at the time in England and after some time with him I got persuaded to move to Los Angeles and I realized that there was a whole new world of Music there and so I went. I was a record producer myself by then but I went back to doing my day job as a session musician and I became a successful session musician in Los Angeles and so I was doing some Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones and Celine and Whitney and so on a lot of those things and then I started doing films as well.

Q :  what can you tell us about your long and successful collaboration with James Cameron ?

Simon Franglen : well my first time was obviously I got called by James Horner to work with him on Titanic so my very first collaboration with Jim Cameron was on Titanic in 1997. We had no money. Titanic was going to be a huge disaster and because we had no money James Horner had called me to say could I create some of the score inside the music computers that I used this in clavier and the synthesizers and Jim Cameron would come and sit with us in this small Studio that we had at the time and we would just go through the music and I found it's an extremely exciting working with Jim Cameron because however hard you think you're working you know he's working harder, however creative you know you, he gives great feedback in terms of telling you where you want to go and for a composer Jim Cameron is a dream to work with. I've now done you know. I did Avatar one obviously and then I did the Pandora theme park with Jim and now the way of water and he makes music better He makes the music in his films better because of the fact that he has a clear idea of where he wants to go now that you know we also have room to experiment and that's great as well.

Q :  Which influence James Horned had on your actual work ?

Simon Franglen : oh well I brought both Jim Cameron and I wanted to bring now Memory of James Horner with us there were themes in Avatar one that were really important to us that we wanted them to we wanted to honor him in the score so you will hear from time to time you will hear themes from Avatar one that I put in there because I wanted. It was there were two reasons one is this is a series of films and so this film is not meant to be totally disconnected from the first and the third won't be totally disconnected from the second. There had to be themes and there were themes that we liked we liked the I See You theme from Avatar one so I use that sometimes in moments with Jake and Neytiri and so on and there were other little bits where we wanted a motif that we had you that had come from Avatar one  to put it in you know there's a lot of music in this film I think I've written there's close to three hours of finished music in this film and so there are times when bringing some from Avatar one seemed like the right thing to do and I'm very pleased that I could bring my friend with me.

Q :  What means for you the world of Avatar ?

Simon Franglen : I think Avatar is meant to be a description of what we could be as humans. I think that's the way that Jim would recall would explain it that the idea of being connected with nature rather than destroying it and in some ways,  I know he said this before that Pandora is meant to be our good side and then the RDA are meant to be our bad side about how we treat our world and I think that's exactly how I treat it. How I feel about it is that it's meant to parallel what we should be doing.

Q :  What was the mood like at the recording sessions ?

Simon Franglen : I think everybody was very excited. I mean. We had some fabulous musicians here in Los Angeles and owned singers and I've used different uh musicians all around the world but the recording sessions were very very enthusiastic people. I think, I had a great Orchestra. I had a hundred-piece Orchestra for this I had to split them up a little bit because Covid meant that I could not have all of them in the same room so I had to have the brass separate to the strings but no I was very I could not be more proud of the great musicians who have played on the score. They have been fabulous.

Q :  What must be for you a great collaboration between a director and composer ?

Simon Franglen : the great thing about Jim Cameron is that I only have him. It is the only person than I need to please apart from myself. So there are which is great sometimes with some films you have other producers you have different people that you have to talk to but with Jim. Jim takes my music. He'll often say right here give me this piece of music so I say we finished he says yeah this is great give it to me now and then a week or two weeks later he has done little things to it he's moved this here he's taken peace there or he's taken something I've written from earlier in the film and put it later and he will slice up and then I have a new piece of music which he says how about this and then I sit there and I go. I can understand what you want to do and then I have to rewrite to make that smoother but he will give me a clear intention of where he wants to go and I love the collaboration with Jim; Jim challenges me to try and make everything better and better and better.

Q :  What is for you the main duty of a good composer ?

Simon Franglen : the duty of good composer is to reflect the film. Is to give you is to make the images come to life to make the emotions come to life and so when you have great images like we have here. It's the easiest job because I can write a piece of music and as long as if Jim is happy then the images are telling me what to do they bring they you know. I sit there and I play and all I am trying to do is to give that feeling underneath so film music is all about the underneath of about the heart and how you feel and I hope that on the score that I have done for the way of water I've tried to give it heart.

Q : You have spent over a year composing the nearly 3 hours of original score for Avatar: The Way of Water. Can you talk about this please ?

Simon Franglen : Yes,  so after we had started earlier doing some of the on-screen music so the music for instance singing her song Ice wrote that in 2018 but when we came to do the final music for the score I flew down to New Zealand to be with Jim and we wanted to work closely there and so I started with him in New Zealand. We built some custom Studios there in his production area so that he could be just down the hall from me and  he would come and we would collaborate as we worked now. We had some problems because covered meant that we had to have some lockdowns so sometimes I would do a zoom call with him where he was the other side of the door and I could hear his voice through the door and I would hear his voice through the zoom one half a second later but that was so that we didn't stop the whole production. We wanted to make sure that each of the different departments my music department, the sound effects Department, his editorial Department though if any of them were to be everybody was to get infected that the whole film would not stop that was the worry but I went and worked with him in New Zealand and then I would go back to Los Angeles to do the music with the orchestra and that was how it worked.

Q : how do you found a such powerful inspiration to create a such great for this music ?

Simon Franglen : well, thank you, I'll take the compliment first of all but I think that in this case the inspiration came from many things. There were two major themes in this film one is the theme of family and so when I wrote the Songcord which is in the script in the very first paragraph of the film it says Neytiri sings the Songcord so the first thing I had to do was write the Songcord and once I had written that that became one of my main orchestral themes and that became the theme for the family but then the next thing was another major part of this film is obviously the water and the mecca you know tribe and payakan the talcun and even the RDA so the next thing was where that looked at where the light came through water I looked at the way the light hits the bottom of the sand at the bottom of the ocean and things are the usual things Jim and I were talking about we were saying he wanted that sense of the water and then I started to write music that was based around that idea of how do I get these. it's a longer more flowing line for many of these themes because that's what the images were telling me to do.

Q : What were the most challenging sequences of the film for you ?
 
Simon Franglen : probably the most challenging seconds of this film for me to score were probably there is a point where the family is swimming out they're trying to get to the service and this needed to have an emotional connection. There's nothing else happening there's only the music, there's no dialogue there's no sound effects and this happens many times there are points where the music is telling you the story because we have no dialogue to tell you and Jim and I wrote a cue. Tt's about almost five minutes long and I wrote it and I Ihink this is great I think this is great and he looked at it and he went it's really good and then a few days later he went no you can do better and so I went back and I went right okay and then I started.  I right okay and I wrote something else and I went I think this is great I think this is great he said and then a few days later he said to me you're almost there but not quite so and he shows me something else and so I went I threw it away and finally the third time after so I've written 15 minutes of music to get to this one piece the third time I played with him and he started crying as I'm playing it and he stayed in tears all the way through to the end and I thought if I can get Jim Cameron to cry then I know that I've done something good because he is a here's somebody for whom heart is everything and he said yeah okay you've got it this time.

Q :  What can you tell us about the song  Songcord ?

Simon Franglen : so Songcord was it's in the script it's right there at the beginning and he says later he sings the songcord is meant to be the idea that the pan on Pandora the na’vis can sing the story of their family like a family tree so they sing of their ancestors and every time there is a new birth and there is a new child these they have a new songcord and they carry these chords with them so she would have a song called for her father and for her grandfather and her grandmother and so on she would carry these Song chords and the idea is that you put beads on the song called so that you sing the birth of  your son or your daughter and I looked at Traditions around the world with different indigenous tribes and I saw that there was this idea of carrying the light so that there is a spark in the morning and that is your birth and then there is the Dawn and the Dawn and the light grows and you carry that light with you through the day and then you take that light with you towards the sunset and so I that became my inspiration for the lyric but I also wanted to write the lyric in Na’vi because I wanted it to feel old. I wanted to feel part of Pandora so that was the other challenge was to write to Lyric that sounded beautiful for Zoe Saldana to sing in Naveen. Now when you see it on the screen she's singing that performance that performance is live it isn't pre-recorded she didn't go into a studio and record that that's actually her singing as you see her mouth moving on the screen .

Q :  As a musician and producer, you have worked with many of the biggest songwriters and performers including Diane Warren, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Quincy Jones, and Celine Dion. Can you tell us an anecdote about that ?

Simon Franglen : I think I can tell you that when we were doing, I'm trying to think of a good one that that is allowed. I could I could tell you about the weekend. I can tell you the about the little thing that might be a good anecdote I would tell you that The Weeknd came and we when we were, I sent him some ideas and we've worked on another the song for the end of this film and the weekend is an amazing singer and as we were working on this song I sent him ideas he would send things back to me and because it was important to Jim that this song connected to the film that it felt like they were joined so there are themes from the film music in the song and there's textures you can hear the sort of Na’vi voices and drums as well and a big Orchestra as well as what able and Swedish House Mafia bring and we were talking about this. He's hugely into films he loves films and I think that Abel understood that there was a cinematic requirement to this  song it needed to have that sense of scale which he did and we when I came to Los Angeles to do the vocals with him we went into a studio that I'd worked in many times when before when I was years and years ago and it's the same Studio that we that I think they did We are the world in and he sang this incredible vocal and I realized there was this point where he's just sitting there reading his lyrics off his phone and it flows and you could see that he is such a natural former and that I had many years ago I'd worked with Michael Jackson and Abel has that same thing of that sense of this natural placement of his voice and the way that he works reminds me a lot of Michael Jackson. I think that the that able The Weeknd is a phenomenal artist.

Q : Will you be interested to work with French directors?

Simon Franglen : I work with the French director all the time. I've worked with two French directors so but I just did Notre-Dame on Fire with Jean-Jacques Anaud in the beginning of this year uh which we can we finished which was a wonderful experience of Jean-Jacques. He's one of my best friends and if any time he ever says I have a film the answer is yes and so for that one I came to Paris we started working and then he said well we need to go to the Cathedral so we climbed up to the very top of the Cathedral and we and they allowed me to go and Sample the bells to record the Bells but because they were these 500 euro bills I got to hit them with hammers I got to do things to make some special sounds for that film so I think Jean-Jacques is  somebody I will always say yes. I think French directors are some of the finest directors in the world.

Q : Have you already to think about Avatar 3 score ?

Simon Franglen : oh yes. I've already started working on it. I have written music for Avatar 3 already. There is when we were working on the music that you see on screen we started doing things for Avatar 3 which I did in 2018. And 2019. I've already got music there and then I've already written although I wrote too much music for this film I had five hours of finished music a lot of the things that I've written now. We were looking at and saying actually this will work better on Avatar 3. so uh yes I've got quite a lot of music already written.

Simon Franglen is a composer and producer of film, classical and contemporary music.  Franglen’s credits include four of the top grossing films of all time and six of the top selling albums. He was nominated for a Golden Globe award for his work on Avatar and won the record of the year Grammy as a producer on My heart will go on, sung by Celine Dion for the film Titanic. upcoming work include the avatar sequels, avatar: way of water to be released in 2022, avatar 3 to be released in 2024, a multi-year immersive and installation project in the USA, and a new orchestral and choral work to be premiered in 2023. he recently won the international film music critics award for best drama score (2021) for Curse of Turandot, and composed the score to Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 2022 film, Nôtre-dame on fire, the dramatic re-enactment of the saving of the cathedral.

Franglen has over 400 album credits, including Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion. Franglen was a top line session musician and producer in Los Angeles for several years, with dozens of multi-platinum albums and singles.  He started in films working for John Barry, initially on the soundtrack to Dances with Wolve and then for many projects after. He created the gritty electronica for Howard Shore's score to David Fincher's se7en and david cronenberg's Crash, produced the vocals for Moulin Rouge, programmed for the bodyguard soundtrack. He was well-known for his long-time collaboration with James Horner as arranger and score producer on films such as Avatar, The Amazing Spider-man, Titani' and others. after Horner's tragic death in 2015, Franglen completed the score to the magnificent seven (2016), for which he received an ASCAP award and finished the composition and delivered the music to Lightstorm/Disney's 'pandora, world of avatar' - the groundbreaking theme park area in florida.

Franglen has major 3d installations running the world. Pink Floyd asked him to produce 3d audio mixes for their mortal remains; this premiered at the Victoria & Albert museum, London before touring worldwide. Shanghai tower commissioned him to compose a permanent installation for The highest art space in the world (CNN), this required recording four interlocking 60 piece orchestras to give a true 3d experience within an array of 240 loudspeakers - 2000ft up on the 126th floor. in 2019 he premiered a 90-minute orchestral and choral work "the birth of skies and earth".

Synopsis : 
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water tells the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri and their children), the trials they face, the paths they must take to protect each other, the battles they must fight to stay alive and the tragedies they endure.

Avatar: The Way of Water
Directed by James Cameron
Screenplay by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver
Story by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno
Based on Characters by James Cameron
Produced by James Cameron, Jon Landau
Starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet
Cinematography : Russell Carpenter
Edited by Stephen E. Rivkin, David Brenner, John Refoua, James Cameron
Music by Simon Franglen
Production companies : Lightstorm Entertainment, TSG Entertainment
Distributed by 20th Century Studios
Release date : December 14, 2022 (France), December 16, 2022 (United States)
Running time : 192 minutes

we would like to thanks Simon Franglen for answered to our questions, Marygrace Oglesby and Ray Costa for this great interview.

Photo Simon Franglen: Sophie Janinet / Mulderville